Plans to give Greece extra time to meet deficit-cutting targets would open up a financing gap of around 15 billion euros ($19 billion) through 2014 and 17.6 billion euros in the two following years, the country’s creditors said.

The “troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund supplied the estimates for tonight’s meeting of euro-area finance ministers in Brussels, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News.

The report gave a mixed assessment of Greece’s progress from debt to recovery, saluting Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s coalition for “a significant catching-up” while saying that “risks to the program remain very large.”

The 115-page draft didn’t include proposals for plugging the financing hole and two critical sections — on Greece’s debt sustainability and recommendations for next steps in the three- year effort to turn the country around — were left blank.

The report assumed that Greece will succeed in getting two additional years, until 2016, to meet fiscal targets. Estimates of the financing gap were in brackets, indicating that they could change before European governments complete work on the Greek rescue package.

Options floated for filling the gap include cutting the interest rates and extending the maturities on Greece’s aid loans, paying out loans on a faster schedule and engineering a buyback of Greek debt. (via Capital.gr)